Ann Demeulemeester / Spring 2013 RTW

Search a show by:

The moment of surprise—shock, even—at the opening of Ann Demeulemeester’s starkly dramatic show wasn’t about what was there, but what wasn’t. And that, specifically, would be the absence of any kind of leg covering (at first, at least). None of her brilliantly cut masculine trousers, a lifetime’s work to feminize them with an expertly wrought slouchiness; her spiraling skirts that tumble and twist to the floor; or boyish pants, scissored to finish above the ankle, all the better to amplify the lines of a heartbreakingly romantic poet’s frock coat. (More on the likes of those and their eventual appearance in her show later.) No, that double take was provided by long, tawny, naked limbs appearing from beneath the highly abbreviated hem of a black dress, with a cleric-like rigor to it, waisted by a strict black leather corset belt lined with metal rings, while the sleeves trailing long and medieval in the dress’s wake, all this worn with black ankle boots with a high geometric sculpted wedge; monastic, but with a fetish for modern-day urbanity.

At this point, one should leap in to clear something up about the shortness. This wasn’t Demeulemeester trying to be sexy. (Although it kind of looked it, and that’s meant as a compliment.) Or about her lending her voice to the chorus calling for a return to the sixties; nothing so obvious or clichéd from a designer whose instincts are always expressed in ways highly sensitive to women and in ways denuded of so many of the “inspirations” and “references” that others have recourse to. This was simply her responding to the overriding interest in next spring’s minimalistic linearity—and what better way than with an uninterrupted expanse of leg?

That was the opening shot for an incisively sharp collection that featured plenty of looks, based around jackets most often, with minuscule hemlines: strong-shouldered numbers with more of those goth-Guinevere sleeves; tiny shorts worn with tailoring slashed up the back; or soft, collapsing, coat-style pieces worn one atop the other. Gradually, Demeulemeester created powerful contrasts by dropping everything to the floor, which took her into more familiar territory, including sinuous, super-long dresses, blocked in black and white, and always with a train, or those fluid, wide trousers so immediately identifiable as hers, or a trio of beautifully flowing evening dresses—white, cream, pearl gray—whose open backs revealed a matching underdress and perhaps a graphic metal chain detail glinting subtly from behind. All of this caught the prevailing direction of spring, undoubtedly, but it also never strayed for one second from Demeulemeester’s own alluring and intriguing voice.